Two U.S. citizens were shot dead by gunmen Wednesday night in western Mexico, local authorities said, dealing a setback to the Mexican government’s efforts to stem violence plaguing several regions of the country.
The attack in Angamacutiro, a town in Michoacan state where drug gangs have fought to dominate the local economy and drug trafficking routes, comes after other high-profile killings and kidnappings in the area.
The couple — identified by local authorities only as Rafael Cardona, 53, and Gloria Ambriz, 50 — lived in California and arrived in late November to spend the holidays with family, said Magdalena Guzman, press officer for the Michoacan prosecutor’s office. In a social media post, the municipality said the victims were the brother and sister-in-law of the wife of the current mayor of Angamacutiro, Hermes Pacheco.
Prosecutors said Cardona was born in the United States and Ambriz was a naturalized American born in Mexico. Guzman said there was no immediate information on why the couple had been targeted.
Authorities learned of the attack after security agents found the couple’s vehicle riddled with bullets on a street in Angamacutiro. Inside was the body of Ambriz, who died instantly, authorities said. Cardona, found alive but seriously wounded, was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died early Thursday, Guzman said.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico said authorities were “aware of the situation” and were monitoring it closely. The State Department said in a statement: “We are aware of reports of the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Michoacan, Mexico. We are working to gather more information and stand ready to provide consular assistance if necessary.”
The killings followed a series of bloody episodes in Angamacutiro, which borders Guanajuato, one of Mexico’s most violent states, northwest of Mexico City. In late October, men armed with assault rifles killed the town’s police chief. The city’s former mayor, Maribel Juárez Blanquet, was kidnapped earlier this year and remains missing. Her brother, a local deputy, was shot dead in 2020.
“It’s not easy for me to bring nine bodyguards, to ride in an armored truck. Because it’s not a luxury, because it’s a necessity,” Juárez Blanquet told a crowd at a rally in 2021, when she was running for re-election as mayor. “Despite the threats they’ve made to me, I’m not going to give up.”
Several outbreaks of violence — an ongoing turf war in the northern state of Sinaloa, the decapitation of a mayor and the deadly shooting of migrants by Mexican soldiers — have marred the first months in office of Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who was voted in on a promise to address the bloodshed ravaging the country from north to south.
“Rest assured that we are going to decrease crime rates,” Sheinbaum told the country’s governors at a security meeting Tuesday in the resort city of Acapulco, where she outlined her administration’s efforts to keep violence at bay.
Sheinbaum has focused her security strategy on four key points: preventing young people from joining the ranks of criminals by placing them in the workplace or a classroom; bolstering Mexican federal soldiers, including a 130,000-strong National Guard, and local and state police forces to prevent any collusion with organized crime groups; focus on intelligence and investigations that lead to high-profile arrests, and improve coordination between federal and state authorities, including prosecutors.
“When they ask me if the strategy is going to work, I am convinced that it is going to work,” Sheinbaum said during Tuesday’s meeting.
The next day, gunmen shot and killed a high-ranking judge as he left a court building in Acapulco.
Source: nytimes
